The Spatial Web: How Web 3.0 Will Connect Humans, Machines, and AI to Transform the World

by Gabriel Rene

the Web 3.0 era is about the Internet of Everything.

As we bear witness to the Digital Transformation of our world and cross the threshold into the Web 3.0 era, we face some extraordinary choices with serious and wide-ranging implications. Our technologies, from the first use of fire to the future of facial recognition, appear to be neutral by their very nature. Their appearance obscures their innate potential to magnify both the best and worst of human desires. Like the tale of Prometheus who stole fire from the gods to give to humankind to warm our homes and illuminate our civilizations, we must always remember that the gift of fire used to cook our food can just as easily become a curse that burns down our home. The 21st-century technologies introduced in this book also contain the power to burn both ways, albeit at a previously unimaginable level of power and scale. And it is precisely for this reason that we as a species must carefully consider their use because the choices we make will fundamentally impact the lives of billions and set the stage for decades, perhaps centuries, to come. Our choices will not only determine the territorial lines of the web and the world, but also our very definition of the words humanity, civilization, and even reality itself. We must choose wisely.

We are digitizing the physical and “physicalizing” the digital. Clear boundaries between the real and the virtual are dissolving.

Simply put, Moore’s Law makes computing faster and cheaper while Metcalfe’s Law grows the size and value of a network.

a Web 3.0 era that secures the privacy and property rights of individuals while ensuring secure and trustworthy interactions and transactions between the human, machine, and virtual economies. This future literally adds a new dimension to the web. It enables —The Spatial Web.

Today, we can’t share knowledge all that effectively because we cannot share our mental models and maps of the world directly between brains. We can’t copy/paste ideas and concepts between ourselves, much less create, edit, or share them with AI, or IoT devices. The human mind constructs a 3D mental model of reality that (today) cannot not be directly shared between others. Whereas we think and reason spatially, traditionally, we’ve relied on language, words, and visual representation in the form of 2D or 3D drawings to convey spatial information and context to others. The capture, transmission, and interpretation of objects in space acts is like a Private Virtual Reality (VR) that must be translated into a foreign tongue of words, text, or pictures in order to be shared. We’re forced to use 2nd order mediums that reduce and degrade our internal models. Along the way, we lose much of the fidelity, nuance, and context. But what if we had the technology to collaborate with machines and artificial intelligence to share collective 3D models and maps of our experience and knowledge directly? Instead of being locked in our Private VR we could share in a kind of multi-dimensional Public AR—a digitally-mediated consensus reality — an idea as exciting as it is concerning. However, using Distributed Ledger technologies like Blockchain could enable us to reliably verify factual data about the world while enabling the freedom to collaboratively explore, edit, mashup, and remix reality...

Despite the promise of a new Spatial Web, today we are still using web technologies invented decades ago that have significant limitations with regard to their use in the physical world. Today’s web protocols were designed for interconnecting pages on computers, not people, places, and things in the real world. These protocols were designed for sharing information, not for managing and coordinating the activities of humans, machines and AI or engaging in real-time global trade and commerce.

Web 1.0 consisted of static documents and read-only data on PCs. Web 2.0 introduced user-generated multimedia content, interactive web applications, and social media on multi-touch smartphones. Web 3.0 marks the rise of AR and VR headsets, smart glasses, wearables, and sensors. These will enable the Spatial Web to project our information, ideas, and imaginations into the world around us, weave them into every conversation, displaying them in our cities, in the places we work, learn and live. With intuitively placed information, AI-assisted interaction, cryptographically secure information, and digital payments, a new kind of network is emerging. One where the Web becomes the World.

Suffering from a case of industry-centric myopia, many contemporary definitions of Web 3.0 also lack holistic thinking. For example, Web 3.0 will not be limited to being a cryptocurrency-driven, peer-to-peer “Internet of Value” as many of the Blockchain faithful claim, or an “Internet of Intelligence” driven by a network of (hopefully) benevolent AI as the Artificial Intelligentsia suggest. It will not merely be the trillion device “Internet of Things” as Industry 4.0 advocates espouse or the “Internet of Me” where various wearables and ingestibles will be able to track every pulse, personalize every meal, and optimize every step, emotional state, and eventually even thought. It will not even be the long-prophesied 3D Internet of interconnected worlds, a Virtual Reality “Metaverse” or VR Cloud or its more recent counterpart, the AR Cloud and its “Internet of Places” as the Spatial Computing initiates may believe. No. Web 3.0 will not be limited to any one of these definitions because, in this next era of the web, it includes all of them. In Web 3.0, all of these get “connected” into the Internet of Everything.

It is the digitization of location and commercialization of spatial tasks that form the foundation for the Spatial Web.

Technology augments and extends the capabilities of the human body and brain. From the most primitive digging tools to the most advanced robotics, from the earliest abacus to the leading-edge artificial intelligence, our technologies have exponentially increased our ability to exert control over space, time, and matter (e.g., manipulate our environment for our collective benefit). Digitization is simply the latest technology in a long line, invented to increase our control over reality. It enables us to translate the “external state of reality” into digital information, which allows us to use computers to edit, manipulate, share, and improve it, alter or update its context, and make it more valuable. As mentioned earlier, the road along the path of Digitization began with numbers, then letters, advancing through imagery, audio, and video. In every case, their production, editability, distribution, and sharing became increasingly easier and more efficient and hence more valuable. Spatialization is a technology that extends the extraordinary benefits and capabilities of digitization to every aspect of the physical world in which we live unlocking valuable new products, services and business models in the process. This is because spatial computing, like personal and mobile computing before it, has the rare ability to benefit all sectors of society—the consumer, public, private, and education sectors simultaneously. Benefits extend to architects and industrial engineers who de...

But this is only part of the story. Humans respond to and process visual data better than any other type of data. Some statistics suggest that the brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text and that 90 percent of information processed by the brain is visual. What is true is that 30% of the brain is dedicated to the visual system. We recognize visual patterns very quickly and can respond much quicker than to words and numbers.

The recent multibillion-dollar investments in VR and AR technologies in order to advance towards an “eye-centric” interface tier is driven by the biological need for a 3D binocular interface. Anything else is just too inefficient. Ninety percent of the world’s data was created in the last two years alone—and it is not slowing down. The explosion of big data by a multitude of sources—from across websites and social media to the expanded use of mobile devices—makes it difficult for individuals and organizations to make sense of the data today, but as a new generation of wearables and IoT sensors are added, it will be nearly impossible to translate the oceans of real-time data into useful decision-making information, unless we upgrade the way this information is presented.

Spatial interfaces will be necessary in order to cope with this explosion of data. We need to be able to view it, navigate it, modify it, share it, make decisions about it, use it to simulate multiple alternative possible futures, and much more. The spreadsheet of 2025 will more likely be a simulation space that enables us to ask “What if?” questions and see the results displayed as a 3D immersive example of what we are testing or requesting. It’s one example of the new model type of “the world,” rather than that of “the book.”

Web 3.0 will utilize Spatial (AR, VR, MR), Physical (IoT, Wearables, Robotics), Cognitive (ML, AI,) and Distributed (Blockchain, Edge) computing technologies, simultaneously as part of an integrated stack. These four computing trends make up the three tiers of Web 3.0.

In VR anything you dream of can be experienced. Put on a headset and experience being transported to anywhere in the physical world, the universe, or any fictional universe, at any point in history—past, present, or future. Experience the widest scope of possible situations and scenarios. Be yourself, or be any character you wish—big or small, young or old, human or…other. Enter an artery to watch white blood cells fight off an invading virus, or travel through space and time at light speed to watch the universe being born. VR is programmable imagination. It is unlimited in its experiential applications.

Immersive media may also allow us to feel closer to each other and connect personally to global issues such as humanitarian crises. VR can enable a form of telepresence that evokes the kind of empathetic and emotional responses usually reserved for when we are physically present. It offers an experience that is simply impossible in other mediums, granting us the magical power to step into a 3D replica of a 1,500-year-old cave full of Buddhist art, to be transported into the shoes of a Syrian child living in a Jordan refugee camp, or to watch the Notre Dame tower burn down from across the bridge. We feel connected not because we are any more Buddhist or Syrian or Parisian, but because the medium reminds us that we all share the experience of being human.

As it evolves, AR will be able to provide immersive step-by-step instructions for technicians, leading to time-saving and cost reduction through improved performance. AR makes work more accurate and work environments safer through effective, engaging simulation and training. The precise visualization of internal components of machines and their parts facilitates a greater depth of knowledge and comprehension by providing rich simulation of different scenarios.

The Internet of Things will enable the digitization of every object in the world and capture data from every person, place, and thing. Think of this as the “read/write” Interface Tier to the planet. A trillion sensors will be laid over the world, like planetary-scale skin and senses with the ability to detect temperature, pressure, moisture, light, sound, motion, speed, position, chemicals, smoke, and more. This gives the IoT superhuman capabilities for good that allow these networked devices to see through walls to detect smoke in a highrise in New York, or sense the rising of a tide far in advance of a Tsunami in Indonesia, or the blood flow and pressure of an aging centenarian in Dubai, preventing the burning of a building, saving the citizens of an island paradise, and the life of a grandmother.

Even when not hacked, our personal data and activities have become a new kind of natural resource to be mined and sold to the highest bidder. Sadly, this has also led to the promotion of fake news and other counterfeit information posing as genuine articles. The monetization of our online and offline behavior actually promotes false stories over true ones because they fuel more user engagement. False rage “sells.”

Wearable technology does offer amazing benefits and can revolutionize the healthcare industry. It enables us to use data to become more aware of our health in order to improve our well-being and prevent future health risks and illnesses. Fitness wearables address step tracking, sleep monitoring, and heart rate tracking, and even more complicated metrics such as diet, posture, skin temperature, and respiratory rate. They collect data regarding weight gain or loss, blood oxygen levels, and stress, which can be used to highlight potential risk factors or even alert others in real-time if life-threatening changes occur. For both preventative and protective reasons, wearable technology will continue to be adopted. Apple has indicated that “Health” is their new frontier, and that is good because, where Apple goes, the rest of the market tends to follow. However, the potential misuse of wearable health data for inappropriate monitoring, tracking, and classification increases the risk of discriminatory actions by insurance providers, employers, and governments and further allows these companies to exploit user data through third-party sales.

The converged power of AI and Quantum Computing would not only be capable of analyzing and making sense of any real-world scene but will be able to virtually recreate any scene imaginable and enable us to experience it. Don’t like how yesterday turned out? You could re-experience it with a different outcome or even simulate a future tomorrow—in this world or any other where the people, places, things, and all the possible interactions would be computer-generated and could include simulations of the actual people in your life or imaginary ones. It would be like a choose-your-own-adventure for “reality” played out in a virtual reality that may be mediated by wearable glasses and haptic body suits or via a neural lace apparatus that connects directly to the brain. And all of this would be completely interactive and reactive in real-time.

A stateful Spatial Web enables smart digital twins of people, physical spaces, and objects to be reliably and securely linked together, spatially. The effect of this is that when an object or person moves into or out of any physical or virtual space, a Spatial Contract can be executed automatically, subject to a set of spatial permissions set by the owner or approved entity triggering a record of the action and/or initiating a transaction. This makes the Spatial Web a trustworthy network for any form of interaction, transaction, or transportation. With Smart Spaces and Smart Assets, Artificial Intelligence will be able to see, hear, touch, and move things both physical and digital using computer vision, the IoT, and Robotics. It can be used to guide drones and automated vehicles, restrict access to users or robots, and track Smart Assets from one Smart Space to another. Smart Contracts and Smart Payments can enable seamless and secure interactions and transactions in both virtual and geo-locations, letting users with Smart Accounts transfer Smart Assets, pay for goods and services, and be paid for the use of yours, from world to world. This is the power of adding statefulness to the web. It enables entirely new categories of features and benefits. Including standardized identifiers for people, places and things allowing for hyperspace links to be added to the Smart Twin of any object or person to connect information about anything to the thing itself. Imagine a crowdsource...

Solution: Enable any space to become a Smart Space whose boundaries are defined by coordinates—either real world (latitude, longitude, and elevation/altitude) with 0,0,0 or virtual (x/y/z) including outdoor and indoor spaces. Enable for sub-millimeter granularity and third-party re-localization optimization. Smart Spaces enable assets to have proof of their location, ownership, and permissions in time and space, across any device, platform, and location within virtual spaces and in the real world. They are searchable and can transact with Users or Assets. They can support multiple Users and Channels of Spatial Content.

Benefit: Smart Payments enable automatable, seamless payments across the Spatial Web. Users, Spaces and Assets can transact with one another, subject to permissions. This allows Smart Assets to transact autonomously and enables micro-transactions globally at low or zero cost. This is not unlike the spatial transactions that occur when we exit an Uber car, enter an AirBnB home, our receive a Postmates order. The fundamental difference is that in the Spatial Web, these kinds of Spatial Transactions are a default benefit of its Smart Payment architecture. The outcome of such an architecture is a Spatial Network Economy that enables autonomic economic functions for any transaction. Example: A shopper walks into a store, is identified via facial recognition cameras, grabs the items they desire and are charged to their Smart Account upon exit. A gamer slays a famous dragon with a magic sword and then takes the sword into another world and sells to another player; the record of its dragon-slaying history goes with it. As the sword is used to slay various notable enemies, it is resold at an increasingly higher price across various game worlds.

Benefit: Smart Accounts enable private, secure and seamless interactions and transactions of Assets, across Spaces and between Users. Example: A specific medical student in Cuba virtually attends an operation in Brussels led by a famous surgeon and then gets to perform the same surgery virtually, while being critiqued by the surgeon and peers from around the world. An FAA-approved technician sees a 3D virtual copy or “digital twin” of a jet engine and its historical service record, makes repairs, and updates the service record.

What exactly was Galileo’s crime? He had publicly placed his faith in objective and observable data and not in the subjective infallibility of the church. Galileo was one of the first to clearly state that the laws of nature are mathematical. He wrote “Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe ... It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures.” Galileo’s groundbreaking scientific work and “trust in math” forged the path that led us to our greatest scientific inventions, eventually inspiring the work of Descartes and Thomas Newton whose achievements in philosophy and physics became the iron bedrock upon which the Industrial Revolution was ultimately built upon. Importantly, the key shift in the western world from the Scientific Revolution to the Industrial one was a shift from the faith in the centralized powers of the church to that of the decentralized trust in the verifiable power of science—in observable facts over unquestionable faith. This change started with a willingness to shift perspective, coupled with an intense curiosity of the mind and an unquenchable desire to uncover a better way to describe reality more accurately and truthfully. Today, we have a similar opportunity to adjust our perspective in such a way as to create downstream changes that could alter our understanding of the world, ourselves, and each other for generations to come. We will need to shift as we did before—f...

For the better part of human history our fundamental trust, in reality, has been based on a combination of experience—in the form of empirical sensory data and in the ephemeral—and our interpretation of that data and how we attribute its causes. One might call it the Senses vs. Spirit debate. Millennia have been spent arguing about the veracity of the claims for the empirical vs. the ephemeral as the basis for trust in reality. But along the way, a third contender has quietly entered the field—digitization.

As our trust has increasingly shifted to digital formats, we don’t so much trust our senses or our spirit guides as much as we trust the data. Tesla drivers today have three options for driving. Drive yourself. Trust your senses. Let god drive. Trust the spirit. Let the car drive. Trust the data. Increasingly we will be relying on data to inform and drive the operations and activities of our world, our markets, our energy, transportation, health, and entertainment. Data integrity and our ability to interrogate its provenance and history will be central to our ability to trust anything of real importance in the future. Finally, by allowing data ownership to move from companies and governments back to individuals, not only are individuals able to trust that the data they use can be validated through decentralized mechanisms but also organizations and governments can trust that they have reduced their own exposure to liability and risk associated with storage of such sensitive personal information.

It is the result of what we and our tools make that truly defines our species in the modern era. Perhaps it would be more accurate to describe humanity as Homo realitas—“the species that makes and remakes its own Reality.” That is the real purpose and function of our tools and technologies. To extend our bodies, senses, brains, and imaginations into the world. To make our ideas shareable in order to work together to improve them so that we can make our reality and hence our lives, easier, more useful, safer, and more enjoyable.